


The path of blood will seek you out

by mittagsfrau



Category: Captain America (Movies), Donnybrook, Hell on the border, Kingdom (TV 2014), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Anal Sex, Blood and Gore, Blood and Injury, Character Death, Dubious Consent, Homophobic Language, Hurt No Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Murder, no beta we die like men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-09
Updated: 2020-03-24
Packaged: 2021-03-01 05:13:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 4,830
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23079919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mittagsfrau/pseuds/mittagsfrau
Summary: Soulmates are connected by Soul Threads growing from their hearts. The are visible to themselves an the person connected to them. They will bond if they come close enough to each other and can't escape their fate. If one of them dies, the soul tread is severed and the survivor won't survive on their own for long. The soul thread takes all choices, it's a shackle that will make them drown in the end. Jack and Brock were soulmates. Brock died in the collapse of the Triskellion. Jack survived.
Relationships: Jack Rollins/Alvey Kulina, Jack Rollins/Angus, Jack Rollins/Bob Dozier, Jack Rollins/Brock Rumlow
Comments: 12
Kudos: 19





	1. Prologue

When all is said when all is done  
The time you lost your hope is when I lost my own  
And I will see you when we are gone  
To every fade our own, we'll face the end alone

Our secret shadows give us away  
And I tried to wave to you across this canyon  
But there are no bridges to bear this weight

(Hexvessel: Birthmark)

It’s a perfect summer day. The sky is vast and cerulean blue. There is autumn in Jack’s soul. A cold breeze passing right through him. He shivers in the burning sunlight. A vast and empty space lives inside his chest. It’s growing, will consume him in the end. It’s a gentle way to die. Jack just slips away, every day a little further. He hasn’t eaten in a week.

“Soon”, he tells the ghost he carries in his empty hands and tries to fill them with his tears again.

It shouldn’t hurt that much anymore. There is nothing left of his soul thread. Just an absence, an open wound, that keeps bleeding sluggishly. He can see it, bright red blooming from his aching chest.

Jack remembers the moment Brock died. An all encompassing pain exploded in his soul, soul thread snapping violently. SHIELD saw no point in imprisoning him. They let him go. He wasn’t a threat anymore. Just a dead man walking. There is no escape from fate.

There is no grave. No place to mourn. The burning ruin that took his love away has been leveled, rebuilt. There are just a few photographs. Pictures from SHIELD files, stiff and lifeless. And grainy images taken from afar of a face behind a mask.

Brock lives in his memories and even those are fading with his soul. He forgot the sound of his voice first, then how his face looked from certain angles, the scent of his skin and the feel of it against his own. His arms still reach for Brock at night. Sleep brings no comfort anymore.

Jack waits patiently for the end. Bonded as he was he can’t survive on his own for long. There’s not much left of the man he once was. Brock is just distant, beautiful dream. A dream calling him away.

His bled out soul is just a wisp as the Snap comes. It spirals wildly like a feather, much too light to sink into oblivion. It slips through the cracks of space and time as his severed soul thread connects to another loose end just waiting for him.

It pulls him away to a different time and place.


	2. Bob Dozier

Jack wakes to rain falling from a black sky. His hands grasp handfuls of pine needles and wet soil. The smell of the forest is overwhelming his senses. He blinks up and wonders if this is the underworld. The he feels it. His soul thread pulsing with new life. Jack stops breathing until he gets dizzy. An impossible dream. His dirty hands clutch at his chest that keeps filling and filling.

He struggles to his feet. His soul thread will lead him. Whoever the poor soul connected to him is, they aren’t far.

His sight narrows down to the vanishing point of his bright red soul thread in the distance. Filled with new strength, he runs towards his destiny.

Jack finds him on a bed, a man on the edge of sleep. His broad palm trying to comfort his aching heart. He’s Brock and not Brock. Older, more worn, rougher around the edges. His face is tired and lined, he wears dark stubble on his face like a smudge of sorrow.

Jack sits down on the edge of this familiar stranger’s bed, contemplating that familiar face he had missed so much. This version of Brock smells like wood smoke and horses, of gunpowder and lye soap. Jack reaches out with a trembling hand to touch his cheek and the man startles awake.

He calms as soon as he sees the red thread between them glowing in completion.

“Are you a ghost?”, the man asks. His voice is soft and rough with sleep at the same time, his expression unguarded.

Jack shakes his head, unable to speak.

“I’ve waited for you for a long time. Didn’t expect you to be a man”, he says and his voice is so familiar it almost breaks Jack.

Jack can’t find words, just leans down for a kiss. It feels like coming home from war as he feels him respond hesitantly.

As they come up for air the man asks: “What’s your name?”

“Jack, Jack Rollins”, he says, his voice brittle with disuse and held back tears.

“I’m Bob Dozier”, comes the reply and his calloused hand cradles his jaw, thumb worrying the scar on his chin. Jack smiles for the first time in years and turns his head to kiss the rough palm.

Dozier shivers, his expression turning soft. “You are not what I imagined”

The shirt is easily peeled from broad shoulders. Dozier is unexpectedly shy and sweet. His ravaged flesh is hot and pliant under Jack’s touch. He bestows every scar with kisses until Dozier squirms under him. He looks awed and breathless before Jack even takes his pants off.

Dozier is sprawled on his front, looking back at Jack over his shoulder. The curve of his broad back calls for Jack’s touch.

He doesn’t need to ask. Jack feels the echoes of each lash stroke on his own skin. Their connection has settled, memories starting to blend.

Jack climbs on the bed kneeling over his prone form. He kisses every vertebra starting from his neck, down and down. Dozier arches into every touch, his flesh starved and unused to gentleness.

“You don’t belong here”, Dozier whispers, “I can feel it.”

Jack carefully leans on him, covering him. His own hands seeking Dozier’s. His fingers still slot perfectly into the spaces between the other’s.

“I don’t”, Jack admits, “but I can stay for a while.”

“Leave me before the end”, Dozier implores him, “I don’t want to take you under with me. It will be soon, I can feel it.”

Jack holds him tighter and blinks tears away. He can feel death looming, too.

“I wish, I could keep you safe. I wish we didn’t meet just to be parted again.”

Dozier laughs softly, bitterly. “It’s the way of life. Everything passes, nothing lasts. Let’s make the most of it.” His expression turns sly and he rolls his hips.

Jack makes a strangled sound and bears down, grinding against the firm flesh.

They end up on their sides. Jack pressed tight against Dozier’s back, his cock sliding smoothly between strong thighs. There is an unhurried desperation to it. Jack’s hands greedily roam over inch of sweat slicked tan skin, committing it to memory. His fingertips caress the bared throat, feeling the vibration of a moan.

Dozier clutches Jack’s other hand to his chest where his heart beats wildly.

They separate just to fall together again, a tangle of limbs rolling on the sheets.

In the bleak morning light Dozier looks young and boyish, his smile soft and wistful. They had drifted apart during the night and Jack draws him close again.

“You have to go”, Dozier implores him and Jack complies.

There are gunshots in the distance but he walks away without looking back. The maelstrom takes him in and he falls away again, sinking through time and space until his soul thread snaps and reconnects once again.


	3. Angus

Jack wakes to the sight of a leaden autumn sky. He lies in the grass, all bleached out and sharp. Before he can even get up to look around where his brand new soul thread leads him, pain blossoms in his right flank. He gasps and clutches at the invisible wound, that isn’t his.

It felt like gunshot. Molten heat searing into his flesh, blotting red spots into his vision.

Jack staggers to his feet. His soul thread is pulsing angrily in pain. Nausea threatens to overwhelm him. He coughs, swallows bile and walks towards the origin of the feeling. He follows his brightly glowing soul thread through the washed out colors of the landscape until it disappears into what looks like an abandoned house.

He finds him on the floor, sprawled awkwardly between an overturned chair and the wall. This one lies in a pool of his own blood, unconscious. He’s beautiful the way combat knifes are, deadly and perfectly formed even lying dormant.

Jack crouches down and feels for a pulse, that he knows is there just to calm his own nerves.

The man smells like chemicals, cigarette smoke and old sweat. His skin is cold and clammy under Jack’s touch and he makes the transition between unconscious and alert in less than a second. A meaty hand darts out and wraps around Jack’s wrist, crushing the bones together with barbaric strength.

Jack holds still, pushing the pain away like a bothersome insect. He has suffered worse, he can take it without flinching. Their bond settles uneasily.

Dark eyes meets his, the man’s gaze burns and then Jack cries out as his soul is speared by this stranger. It feels like an attack, like penetration, like the dry drag of skin on sensitive mucus membranes as the man roots around in his soul. Angus, his name is Angus, greedily grabs at all of Jack’s memories, pushing them over, making a mess.

Jack pants and pushes back against the intrusion. He finds a boy at the center of splintered , jagged ruins, the boy Angus once was, small and skinny. An angelic face dominated by big dark doe eyes gleaming wetly. This image starts to fade, bubbling like dissolved in acid. The stench of ozone overwhelms everything.

There are flashes like lightning in the darkness behind Jack’s eyelids and the cramping pain like electricity, he feels like shaking apart.

Angus drops his wrist and Jack slumps in a heap on the floor.

“Conversion therapy?”, Jack croaks and spits out bile.

Angus laughs bitterly and a little too loud. “Didn’t work at all. Didn’t make me less of a fag.”

“Make yourself useful, SEAL”, Angus tells him as they both are standing again. “The fucking bullet is stuck.”

Angus leans against the wall of the dimly lit bathroom. Out of place against the backdrop of faded floral wallpaper. Jack kneels before him as Angus lifts his shirt gingerly. Angus sculpted abs is covered in bright red blood, the same color as the soul thread.

“Stop gawking, you fucking queer and get it out”, Angus hisses.

Jack takes his combat knife to the deceptively small wound, carefully sliding it in until he feels the resistance of metal. Angus knees buckle and his unoccupied hand falls heavy on Jack’s shoulder, fingers digging into the muscle. A strangled scream escapes between Angus’ gritted teeth.

Jack manages to dislodge the bullet and they both watch it clatter on the floor and rolling under the moldy furniture.

When the wound is cauterized by the same blade heated on the stove in the kitchen Jack carefully washes the dried blood off with a wet rag. Angus is tense and uncomfortable under his touch, muscles jumping under his skin. There is too much white in his eyes, pupils blown wide, his nostrils flaring and his lips peeling back to show even teeth.

Jack tries his best to make his larger frame look unthreatening, the soul thread hands between them, quivering and alight with something that might be hate or desire.

“You look good on your knees”, Angus says and takes a shivery breath, willing his tense muscles to relax.

Jack smiles up at him, slanted green fox eyes and a cruel mouth curving at one corner. Angus broad palm tests the fit of the curve of his cheekbone, grip tightening briefly and releasing into a clumsy caress. Jack’s mouth chases the calloused thumb, sucking it in.

Angus shivers. He looks spooked, unsure, close to bolting. There is gooseflesh travelling up his brawny arms, raising all that fine mammalian hair. Jack shuffles closer on his aching knees, noses at the hem of the blood soiled shirt, pushing it up to kiss right beneath the tipped over crescent moon shape of Angus’ navel. He still tastes like iron.

Angus’ other hand tangles in Jack’s hair, finding easy purchase in the slicked back strands.

“You want my cock so badly?” Angus taunts him playfully but not without a hint of malice.

“I’m feeling generous today”, he finally says and opens his pants. Apparently underwear happens to other people. Jack is greeted by the sight of a half hard, circumcised dick. He swallows it down in a smooth motion just to hear Angus sputter and moan.

In the end he has to get up and prop Angus against the wall as his legs finally give out. The blood loss and the shock finally settling in. Angus clutches desperately at him as he finishes him off with his hand.

As they catch their breath, Angus’ head tucked under his chin, Jack wishes he could stay.

He can’t even say goodbye because Angus knocks him out with a nasty uppercut as soon as he’s recovered.


	4. Alvey

Jack finds him in a bar curled over the counter. Head down, shoulders raised as if protecting himself from blows. As he sits next to the man he can hear it. The steady dripping of blood, black in the gloom, drops blooming like ink on the wooden surface of the counter.

Their bond forms like a flood rushing to the shore. Alvey’s soul is a dark ocean, vast and filled to the brim with sharp glass shards, invisible in the water, but Jack can he them clink and whisper. Alvey is overfull with grief and sorrow. Regret is carved into him like the shadows in his eye sockets and under his cheekbones.

He flinches as Jack reaches for one of his hands but doesn’t turn his head to acknowledge him. Jack sits on his blind side, where his eye is swollen shut. The fire of Alvey’s heart is just cooling embers, the fight he just won was the last desperate blaze of flame. He’s fading.

Jack doesn’t find words and Alvey stays mute, too, as he rises and pays for his drink.

Alvey leads him to a hotel room. As soon as the door is closed and locked behind them Alvey starts to strip, slowly and awkwardly, flinching through the pain of a myriad of bruises and contusions. Jack watches him. He looks small and boyish in the low light, defeated and fragile.

Finally Alvey meets his gaze and just says two words. “Fuck me.” It’s Brock’s voice but softer than he ever heard it before. Jack takes a deep breath. He carries his own measure of darkness. There are trap doors and corridors in his mind that are firmly closed, keeping the shadows away. Jack is watching them through murky glass, always on guard. There is something stirring in the abyss, large and dense. Jack hushes his monsters, those who want to hurt and maim and kill.

Alvey’s son is dead. Died in his arms afraid and in pain. It’s Alvey’s fault and he is seeking punishment. He won’t find it in Jack.

“You are hurt enough”, Jack tells him and steps closer. Alvey stares straight ahead to a point on Jack’s throat as Jack’s hand carefully curls around his right hip, the other one cupping the back of his head, bringing him close enough to embrace. Alvey sways and shivers under his touch, arms limp on his sides.

Jack kisses his split lip ever so softly, tasting the iron of his blood. Alvey is used to take, not to give. Taking as much as he can until he is alone again. Jack longs to fill his emptiness, knowing the endeavor would be entirely futile. Alvey’s need is a bottomless well.

He is pliant as Jack maneuvers him to the bed and lies down obediently on his back. He’s a sacrifice on an altar, a tortured saint from a renaissance painting, painfully perfect, Impossible to resist. Jack worships him, navigating bruises and cuts on the rippling surface of his flesh. Alvey stays passive as Jack holds himself over him, caging him in. He is blinking up the ceiling as Jack sinks into his soul, comforting the boy he was, the boy who believed his father beat the gay out of him, all the soft and vulnerable parts like skinned meat, too tender to touch.

Alvey’s hands rise and hover over Jack’s clothed shoulders. He takes a shivery breath and clumsily opens the buttons of Jacks shirt, trembling fingers fluttering against warm skin.

Finally they lie skin to skin on their sides, a close as they can, clinging to each other as they grieve for what they have lost. Together and lonely.

Alvey is inconsolable and Jack so very tired of giving everything and getting nothing back. He feels hollowed out and brittle. It’s his journey, it’s his fading. Like the herald of death he visits every incarnation of Brock just to lose them in the end. It’s enough, Jack has had enough. He’s broken, now fate crushes his remains to dust under her heel.

Jack wants to level all towers fate built for him just to push him off the top, wants to weed out all those years that made him bleed to find freedom, wants to build a house of sea foam and light where he can rest and dream.

There’s a gun in Alvey’s bedside table at his home. Jack can already see how this fragment of Brock is going to die - alone and by his own hands.

Rage slides through his Jack’s veins like lightning, his touch turns unkind on Alvey’s skin as he violently turns him over on his front. Jack leans over the side of the bed to rummage through the pockets of his discarded pants. He finds a packet of lube that won’t be enough to prepare Alvey’s virgin ass but enough to protect Jack’s cock from chafing.

Alvey makes a soft sound of pain as Jack twists two slick fingers into him but doesn’t fight back even as Jack sinks into him, parting tender flesh beyond the point of agony.

Jack sits on his closed thighs, trapping them between his own, holding on to Alvey’s hips and watches the slow drag of his cock in and out of the diamond shaped shadow formed by firm glutes and the juncture of muscular thighs. He can feel the echo of the pain he causes lapping at him through their bond. It’s nothing compared to their separate grief, that encompasses them lie the roar of a storm.

As Jack falters in his already slow pace, Alvey braces himself with his hands on the headboard and begins to push back, impaling himself over and over until Jack’s heavy hand falls on his neck, holding him into place as he starts to fuck him for real.

Alvey muffles his dying animal noises in the pillow, the slap of skin on skin drowns them nearly out. He tries to squirm away, hips canting away, feet trying and failing to find purchase on the sheets until Jack pins him down with his whole body, one arm slipping under Alvey’s front to hold him in place with a hand clawing at his collarbone. This close he can see tears spilling from Alvey’s closed eyes. The cut above his brow has reopened and bleeds sluggishly again.

“Is this what you wanted?” Jack snarls into his ear, grinding deep enough to make Alvey sob in pain. He nods frantically, face dragging over the pillow, leaving smears of red, desperate brushstrokes on a blank canvas.

Jack’s fingers lose their purchase on his collarbone. He slides his hand in a brutal mockery of a caress down over quivering flesh, pausing to twist a nipple cruelly enough to wrench a choked scream from Alvey’s throat before finally finding curling around his hard cock.

Alvey bucks under him like a spooked horse, nearly dislodging him as he comes.

Jack feels sick as looks upon Alvey’s resting form on soiled bedsheets. He watches the slowing rise and fall of his back as he breathes. There is a smear of blood high on his thigh, insignificant between all the other wounds.

As he is dressed again, he slides his combat knife out of his ankle holster and steps over to the bed again with intent. Love can only be cured with a kiss or a knife.


	5. Crossbones

The ebb and tide of grief slowly washes him away like a sandcastle on a beach. Brock feels hollowed out, all the soft fleshy things inside his broken body carved out with a sharpened spoon. He has become threadbare under his waxy, burned skin. His flesh is mostly numb, nerve damage reaching deep under the surface but his soul is still burning, never left the rubble of the Triskellion. He might as well still lie there, screaming until the smoke chokes him, buried under slabs of concrete and steel as the flames lick at him.

Sometimes he can see Jack out of the corner of his eye, a tall figure in the fog, walking away from him. He wants to follow him into the mist of forgotten souls. These days his visions are clearer. It’s a river, Jack is wading through dark waters. Brock can hear them slosh, can smell the rain that is threatening to wash Jack away.

Soon, he tells himself, soon. He still has things to do, plans to make and if he’s honest to himself, Brock wants to make a mark on this world, an ugly, gaping wound, that will keep oozing pus even after his own demise. Romanova and Rogers will have to pay first. Black Widow for killing Jack and Captain America for dropping a fucking building on his face.

What he and Jack had wasn’t perfect but it was theirs.

Brock keeps tinkering with his “Crossbones” armor. It’s a standard black tactical combat suit and a black suicide vest he had painted painstakingly with his insignia representing white crossbones. Accompanying the suit is a helmet to cover up the mess Rogers had made of his face and gauntlets, which significantly improve his strength to match that of a super soldier. His newest addition are large retractable blades hidden in those gauntlets.

He isn’t surprised as he sees Jack out of the corner of his bad eye. It’s nothing unusual. This time Jack doesn’t fade, though. Brock slowly turns around, feeling very naked clad just in tactical pants and a skintight, long sleeved compression shirt. Jack looks more substantial than ever. He’s also wearing civilian clothes, not his usual tactical outfit.

Then Brock sees it before he even feels it. There is a bright red soul thread connecting their hearts. It’s pulsing with life. Then he can feel Jack’s soul reaching out for him. It hurts, it hurts so much having the gnawing emptiness that has grown inside him filled again. His knees buckle and his vision greys. He’s unconscious before he even hits the floor.

Brock wakes to the sensation of being held. He’s pressed up to a solid, warm body, strong arms encircling him and there is a touch to his forehead. It’s very faint, just a light pressure. As he opens his eyes, Jack is kissing his face. Hesitantly Brock reaches out through their bond. Jack feels familiar and strange at once. He’s heard about theories of soul bonds transcending universes. Brock always had dismissed those. Now there are big hands roaming over him, feeling the shape of his body through his clothes. Brock’s narrow field bed is creaking dangerously under their combined weight but he feels brave enough to meet Jack’s eyes.

He finds pain in them and joy. There is love pouring through their soul bond, which is new and clearly distinguishes this Jack from his. Is it meant for him or for the other version of him he can see in Jack’s memories? Jack’s Brock was all confident swagger, strength and arrogance. Nothing like him and the pathetic mess he is now.

Jack’s lips find his and Brock loses himself and their kiss. One of Jack’s hands slips under his shirt, testing the shape of his belly, his ribs. His touch feels hot like a brand on his undamaged skin. The pathetic whimpering sounds he had heard for a while now must be his because Jack is too busy mouthing at his neck. Brock can feel his desire through their bond very clearly and even clearer pressed up against his thigh. This is familiar and he gives in, lets Jack open his belt and shove his pants and underwear down. He stops Jack from taking his shirt off, though. His torso is mostly undamaged but his arms were burned until the skin was charcoal. It’s a sight he can barely stand and he doesn’t want Jack to see. Brock covers himself with a gloved hand and turns until his back is facing Jack. It takes some careful maneuvering on the narrow cot but it’s better like this.

Jack kisses his neck and strokes his thighs, halting as he feels Brock’s hand covering his crotch.

“What’s wrong?” Jack asks him softly. There is concern laced into his familiar voice and as Brock struggles to answer Jack slides his hand down from his navel, pushing under Brock’s loose grip. Tears prick in Brock’s eyes as Jack cups him where he’s unresponsive and flaccid.

“My pelvis was practically shattered. Can’t get it up anymore. I also tend to piss myself now when I sneeze.” Brock’s voice sounds rough to his own ears, choked and tight.

Jack scatters more kisses over his neck and shoulders and strokes his limp dick anyway. Brock pushes his hand away and guides it to his ass.

“Do you want this?” Jack whispers into his ear. Brock nods and fights back tears. Jack reaches up to the ammunitions crate serving as a nightstand and takes the tin with Brock’s burn ointment. Brock squeezes his eyes shut, willing his tears away. He feels pathetic and broken.

He startles as Jack’s fingers part him and stroke slick circles around his entrance. They wake a yearning inside him, make him ache in a bittersweet way. He has seen all the others in Jack’s memories and wants this for himself before Jack leaves him again. Brock will die in an explosion, hopefully taking out Captain America with him.

Even his own goddamn ass seems to be broken. He finds himself too tense to open up for Jack’s gentle fingers.

“Just fuck me”, Brock demands angrily, getting frustrated.

Jack gets up and Brock thinks it’s over. He’s going to walk away from him for being unable to perform even the simplest of tasks: lying there and taking it. Jack does surprise him, urging him up on his elbows and knees, taking off the pants and underwear still tangled around his ankles, discarding his boots and socks.

Brock shivers, feeling exposed and fragile. He hides his face in his arms, resting on his forearms, clutching his own hair. The cot creaks as Jack straddles it. Brock expects him to force his way into his stubbornly resisting body as he feels Jack’s hands on his ass, parting him again.

He certainly didn’t expect hot wet breath on his hole and a wet tongue lapping at it. Brock startles violently but Jack holds him in place. He floats away a little as Jack’s tongue dips in shallowly. Soon he is panting wetly under the ministration of Jack’s tongue and fingers, finally opening up for him.

The stretch still burns as Jack’s cock slides into him. He feels speared on it. It’s good, too much and he whines softly. Jack fucks him slowly and deeply, grinding hard against his prostate, making sparks dance down his spine. Brock pants wetly, his thighs are shaking. Jack is achingly sweet with him, whispering praise and kissing and caressing every inch of skin he can reach. It’s a new experience for Brock, he isn’t used to it. Usually he gets fucked hard enough to bruise.

As Jack is as deep as he can go and circles his hips just right Brock comes with a choked off cry and promptly passes out.

As he comes to again. He’s lying on his side, still naked waist down but dry and clean. Jack must have draped a blanket over him. Brock blinks blearily as he takes in the changes in the room. The mess of equipment is neatly packed away into crates and Jack is tinkering with the suicide vest.

He’s still in a haze as Jack dresses him and leads him to a van. An explosion takes the warehouse Brock had hidden in for months as they speed away. Jack takes his hand and interlaces their fingers.

He will stay with him. He will stay.


End file.
